All Rise...

Editor's Note

The Charge

The truth behind history's most provocative secrets.

The Case

The idea here is that bestselling author Brad Meltzer (Book of Lies)
has rounded up a group of experts to solve the greatest unsolved mysteries in
American history. This first season of History Channel's Decoded features
ten episodes:

In many ways, this show is speaking my language. I love history, but not in
the traditional sense. I love the quirky, weird side of history, as opposed to
the boring "what law was passed when" homework side of history.
Decoded rests firmly in the fringes of history, spinning stories of
murder, conspiracy, and secrets.

Meltzer only appears as narrator, occasionally chiming in from a studio. For
the bulk of the series, the actual investigating belongs to Professor Buddy Levy
(the nice guy), mathematician Christine McKinley (the brains), and prosecutor
Scott Rolle (the skeptic). Some of the show's most entertaining moments are when
these three drop the "historic detectives" shtick and just be
themselves, whether marveling at a historically preserved site or bickering with
each other like brothers and sister.

The better episodes of the series are the more concrete, factual ones. When
our heroes explore the death of Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis and Clark fame), and
find materials to support that it wasn't suicide but murder, it's exciting.
Similarly, investigation into conflicting reports about whether presidential
assassin John Wilkes Booth actually died days after Lincoln's shooting or lived
for years afterward shows valid arguments on both sides. These episodes are
peppered with real-life anecdotes about what life was like back then, with looks
at the actual historic sites today, and it's all thrilling stuff.

When episodes get into more abstract territory, they get less enjoyable and
more ridiculous. The Statue of Liberty episode is not about the statue, but
about the Illuminati, an alleged secret society that may or may not have
powerful members everywhere. There's no evidence to suggest that the Illuminati
ever existed, and, conversely, no way to prove that the group is total fiction.
Our three investigators are left wandering around New York, interviewing
conspiracy theorists and skeptics, with the results being that they know just as
little as they did when they started. Similarly, the Freemasons are in the
spotlight more than once this season. Because of their alleged secrecy, the
Freemasons get blamed for everything, despite the fact that they give the
investigators full access to their New York archives and insist that they are
not plotting to overthrow all the world's governments. These episodes end
up being all speculation, and not really about anything.

The biggest flaw of the series is that these cases rarely have any
resolution. Even the better episodes, such as the one about Booth, Lewis, or
famed thief D.B. Cooper, bring us this close to a concrete solution, only
to end before anything can be decided. This happens in cases when the
investigators want to exhume a body for DNA evidence, only to be told they can't
because the graves is a historic site and…the credits roll. Each episode
leaves us hanging like that. The series promises to solve history's greatest
mysteries, but we're instead left with merely talking about history's greatest
mysteries. Whether it's a 200-year-old unsolved murder or the already
long-since-debunked 2012 apocalypse thing, the lack of a concrete solution in
any given episode is bound to frustrate many viewers.

History buffs will want to make this one a rental, but I don't see a lot of
replay value beyond that. Tech specs are a standard made-for-TV picture and 2.0
sound, with a big fat zero for extras.